Book III.

Genius and Influence of the
Papacy

Chapter I.

Genius of the Papacy.

Volumes would scarce suffice to enable us to do justice to the
incomparable genius of the Papacy. Thoroughly to explore and
fully to unfold it would form a life-long task to the man of
profoundest intellect. Such an one might expend all his strength
and all his days in the study, and leave it at last with the
confession that there are depths here which he has not fathomed,
and mysteries which he must leave to be solved by his successors.
Our limits are of the narrowest; and truly it would be a bootless
undertaking to attempt a full elucidation of so vast a subject
within the stinted space of a few pages. Nevertheless, we may
indicate the more salient points of the system. If unable here
fully to trace out the sources of its strength, we may be
permitted to point out the direction in which they lie. Nor shall
we have done so in vain, if we succeed in impressing any one with
the singular interest and surpassing importance, as well as the
great difficulty, of the study. Elements of great power there
must have been in a system which has stood so long, and has
exercised so great an influence; and if we can but succeed in
rescuing these from the wreck, so to speak, we might employ them
with advantage in the re-construction of society and the
re-edification of the Church of God. Whole cities have sometimes
been built from the ruins of colossal structures which time or
violence had thrown down: in like manner, we may take the stones
and timber of the Papacy, and consecrate them anew to the good of
society and the service of God. A new solution may be awaiting
the ancient riddle,--"Out of the cater came forth meat, and
out of the strong came forth sweetness."

There is scarce a department of human knowledge on which the
study of the Papacy does not throw light. It affords an amazing
insight into the policy of Satan, its real author. It lays bare
the innate depravity and the deceitful workings of the human
heart; for Popery is but the religion of fallen human nature. It
shows what an amount of mischief may grow out of a single evil
principle, or out of a good one misapplied. It discloses to us
the springs of error, and enables us to trace to the same source
all errors, however deep their disguises, various their names, or
diverse their forms; and it teaches by contrast the simplicity,
consistency, grandeur, and substantial oneness of the truth. It
shows, too, that no false system can be eternal; that it carries
within itself the seeds of death; and that neither the defences
of external power nor the sanctions of a venerable antiquity can
save it from the death to which from its birth it is doomed. It
has no self-renovating power; and, granting even that it should
be let alone from without, the atrophy within would in due time
consign it to its grave. But the immorality which falsehood wants
truth possesses. Its seeds, sown in the world by the author of
Christianity, are indestructible; and though all should perish,
and but one survive, that one seedling would in time burst the
clod and renovate the world. One atom of truth has more power in
it than a whole system of error. We live too near the Papacy to
see all the ends why God has permitted this evil system to exist.
Some are already known, but the more important are still veiled
in mystery; but we cannot doubt that ends there are, great, wise,
and beneficent, and that what is dark to us will be clear to
posterity. Nor can we doubt that, when these ends are disclosed,
they will be found to be such as we have indicated, namely, a
demonstration of the necessity of bringing the principles on
which society is framed into harmony with those on which the
divine government is carried on, in order that society may be
saved, in its future stages, from the errors which have misled it
hitherto, and the calamities which have overwhelmed it.

Popery we have described pretty fully in its leading
principles and aspects; and we now pass from the subject of
Popery, strictly considered, to that of the Papacy. We
distinguish between Popery and the Papacy, and on just grounds,
as we believe. Popery is the principle or error which may be
defined to be salvation of man,in opposition to
the truth of the gospel, which may be defined salvation of God.
The Papacy is the secular organization by which the principle or
error became as it were incarnate. This organization formed the
body in which it dwelt,--the framework by which it sought to
establish itself and reign in the world. The political system of
Europe, as it has existed for the past thousand years and
upwards, has been this framework. The soul that animated this
system was Popery. It was the mind that guided it, and the
powerful though invisible bond that gave it unity. Its head sat
upon the Seven Hills; and there was not a priest in Europe, from
the scarlet cardinals of the Eternal City, down to the wandering
Capuchin, with his dress of serge and his girdle of rope, nor was
there a king in Europe, from the monarchs of France down to the
petty dukes of Germany, who was not a part of that system. All
strove together with one heart and soul for the same iniquitous
object, namely, the exaltation of the priesthood, and especially
of the high priest of Rome, to the dishonour of the High Priest
in the heavens. Such was the Papacy. It was the labour of a
million of minds, and the growth of a thousand years. For we hold
it impossible that the genius of one man, however powerful, could
have contriven such a system; nay, we hold it impossible that the
intellect of Satan himself, vast as it is, could have conceived
beforehand so perfect and comprehensive a scheme. The entire
plan, order, and government of the kingdom of heaven, that is,
the Church, were sketched out from the beginning, and revealed in
the New Testament. Thus, when the apostles began to build, they
knew both how their work was to proceed, and to what it was to
grow. But the author of the Papacy acted strictly on the
development theory. The general outline of his system he
plagiarised manifestly from the Scripture-revelation of the
gospel kingdom. It is equally manifest, that the more fundamental
principles of his scheme he obtained by a process of perversion;
that is, he made counterfeits of the leading doctrines of the
gospel, and on these proceeded to build. But as the work went on,
he introduced novelties both of principle and of form, according
as the spirit of the age and the circumstances of the times
allowed or suggested. With a rare genius, the exigencies of the
times were ever understood, and the modifications and amendments
which they required were executed at the proper moment and in the
happiest way. Working in this manner, Satan at last produced his
masterpiece,--the Papacy.

The Papacy is the most wonderful of all human systems. It
stands alone, unrivalled and unapproached, throwing all former
systems of error into the shade, and challenging alike the power
of man and the cunning of Satan to produce anything in after
times that shall surpass it. The ancient polytheisms were
comparatively simple in their plan and tolerant in their spirit.
Not so the Papacy. It selects the worst passions of our
nature,--the sensuality of the appetites, the idolatry of the
heart, the love of wealth, the lust of dominion, pride, ambition,
the desire to dictate to the faith of others. It gives to these
passions the largest development of which they are capable; it
combines and arranges them with exquisite skill, and thus enables
them to act with the greatest effect. It is the most powerful
organization that ever existed on the side of error and against
the truth. When perfected, the once humble pastor of Rome
occupied a seat which rose not merely above the thrones of earth,
but above the throne of the Eternal. In his exaltation
Satan recognised his own exaltation. The reign of the
servant was the reign of the master. The Pope was Satan's vicar,
and Satan therefore had withheld nothing that could strengthen
his power or enhance his magnificence. He enthroned him on the
wealth and dominion of Europe; he commanded kings to obey him,
and all nations to serve him; he did more for him than he had
done for the greatest of his servants before; he did more for him
than he will ever be able to do again for the best beloved of his
servants; he literally did his all, because the emergency was
great. Let us take this into account when we contemplate the
surpassing state and dazzling magnificence of these masters of
the world. It is the very utmost which even Lucifer can do for a
mortal. Like Judas, the pontiff had betrayed his lord, and behold
the reward!--all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them.

In speaking of the genius of the Papacy, it is necessary to
distinguish between the real though invisible author of Popery,
which is Satan, and the secondary and visible author, that is,
the Pope. Viewing the system as emanating from Satan, its genius
is of course that of its invisible author. He has thrown into it
his whole intellect. Just as the work of redemption is an
exhibition of the character of God, and comes stamped with the
glorious perfections of His nature, so the Papacy is an
exhibition of the character of Satan: it is stamped with the
great qualities of his mind; and in studying the Papacy, we are
just contemplating those powerful but malignant attributes with
which this mysterious spirit is endowed. We gaze into the abyss
of the satanic soul. But, to speak more strictly, the key of the
Papacy, viewed as an emanation from Satan, is to be sought for in
the history of the reduction of our first parents. Satan's policy
has been substantially the same from the beginning. Of course,
that policy has been modified by circumstances, and adapted in a
masterly manner to each successive emergency. Its front of
opposition has been more or less extended, according as it stood
arrayed against but a single truth or a whole system of truths;
but it has employed substantially the same policy throughout. The
general may employ the same rule of military tactics in the
preliminary skirmish as in the more complicated manoeuvres of the
battle that succeeds. In like manner, Satan employed the
identical policy in the assault in the Garden which he developed
more fully in the secular and ecclesiastical domination which he
set up in an after age in Western Europe. The study of the
simpler event, then, furnishes a key for the solution of the
greater and more complicated.

What, then, was his policy in the Garden? It may be summed up
in one word: it was a dexterous substitution of the counterfeit
for the real. Thereal in this case was, that
life was to come to our first parents through the tree as the symbolic
cause; the counterfeit which Satan succeeded in
palming upon them was, that life was to come to them through that
tree as the efficacious cause. They were to have this life
not from, but by the tree. The life was not in the
tree, but beyond it,--in God, from whom they were to receive it,
in the way of submitting to his ordinance. But by a train of
subtle and fallacious argument,--not more subtle and fallacious,
however, than that which Rome still employs,--the woman was
brought to regard the tree as the efficacious cause of the
life which she had been promised, and to which she had been
bidden aspire; she was brought to believe that the life was in
the tree, and that she had only to eat of the tree, and this life
would be hers. "When the woman saw," it is said, that
it was "a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of
the fruit thereof." It is plain that she believed the tree
able of itself to make her wise, and that it had been interdicted
by God, either because he grudged her the good the tree had power
to bestow upon her, or, what is more probable, that she had
mistaken the command altogether. This, then, was the prime object
of Satan's policy. He admitted, at least he did not deny, that
God had promised her life; he admitted that that life was good,
and that she should aim at enjoying it; and he admitted farther,
that it was in connection with the tree that that life was to be
attained. But the question was made to turn on the sort of
connection; Whether did, or did not, the promised good reside in
the tree itself? The command of God plainly intimated that it did
not reside in the tree, but would be bestowed by himself, in the
way of his ordinance, which took the form of a covenant, being
observed. But the point which Satan laboured to establish was,
that the good was in the tree, and that it was intended as the efficacious
means of bestowing that good upon her. Such was the question
the woman had to decide; and according to her decision would one
of two inevitable issues ensue,--her obedience and life, or her
disobedience and death. If she should reject the doctrine of inherent
efficacy, so boldly and artfully propounded, she would of
course look elsewhere for life, even to God, and would respect
his command. Should she, blinded and led away by the subtlety of
the serpent, embrace the doctrine of inherent efficacy,--should
she come to believe that she had only to eat and to live,--she
would of course look only to the tree, and would straightway
partake of its fruits. Unhappily she adopted the latter belief,
and we know the issue.

But here the whole policy of Satan stands revealed. Brought
within the compass of this single transaction, we can study that
policy to much more purpose than when displayed along so extended
a line of operations as the Papacy presents. Here is the key to
Satan's policy of six thousand years, and especially the key to
the Papacy. This transaction exhibits unmistakeably all the worst
features of that evil system. Here was the opus operatum of
a sacrament the woman was taught that she had only to partake,
and, in virtue of the act, would be as God, knowing good and
evil. Here already were works substituted in the room of faith:instead of the passive obedience which the covenant demanded,
in the faith that God would bestow the life he had
promised, the woman was taught to do a certain work by which that
life was to be attained. And here was the doctrine of human
merit,--salvation of man substituted in the room of salvation
of God;for the woman was led to look for life, not
from God, but from the tree, in the way of using its fruits. All
the master errors of the Papacy,--those errors which in the
standard books of Rome take the form of canons or of pontifical
bulls, and which in her temples take the form of gorgeous and
idolatrous rites,--were promulgated for the first time in Eden,
and by this preacher, not, indeed, in express terms, but
by implication: the policy of Satan proceeded on a principle
which embraced them all. Yet farther, we find Satan teaching Eve
that she could not understand the command of God without note and
comment, and offering himself as an infallible interpreter, and
not more grossly perverting the text than Rome has done in
aims of the innumerable instances since. The boastful claims of
the Papist and the Puseyite to a high antiquity are not without
some foundation after all. In one sense, Popery, and its modern
Anglican form Puseyism, are mediaeval error; in another they are
but a development of that false principle by which Eve was
seduced, and mankind precipitated into condemnation and death.

We can clearly trace the policy of Satan in the early
polytheisms; and we find that policy in its essential principles
unchanged. The pagan idolatries were manifestly the substitution
of the counterfeit for the real. Satan, their
author, did not deny that there is a God, or that it is man's
duty to worship him. He reserved these truths as a fixed point,
on which to rest the lever by which he was to move the world. But
in the room of God, one, invisible, and spiritual, he substituted
those material objects which most reflect his glory, or most
largely dispense his goodness;--the sun, as in Chaldea; eminent
men, the founders of tribes or the inventors of the arts, as in
Greece; vile and creeping things, as in Egypt; and, as the course
of this idolatry is ever downward, in some tribes we find that
the very idea of God had well-nigh perished. Falsehood is its own
greatest enemy: its tendency is to destroy itself. Polytheism
corrupted the nations; it thus came to lose its power over the
human mind; and the world had lapsed into scepticism, when
Christianity, young, vigorous, and pure, came forth from her
native mountains to renovate the earth,--to restore that faith
which is the life of man, and that religion which is the strength
of nations. This was the most powerful antagonist that had yet
appeared in the field against the interests of Satan. It was the
great original truth revived with new splendour,--man revolted
from God, redeemed by the Son, and sanctified by the Spirit,--the
truth which Satan had supplanted by his LIE of polytheism; and,
powerful as true, it attested its power by planting its trophies
and monuments above the abjured creeds and prostrate temples of
paganism.

This antagonist Satan could confront with but his old policy.
That policy took a new form, to adapt itself to new
circumstances: its edge was finer, its complications greatly more
intricate, and its scale of operation vastly larger; still it was
the old policy, radically, essentially unchanged, beneath its new
modifications and altered forms. Satan presented over again to
the world the COUNTERFEIT; and he succeeded once more in
persuading the world to accept the counterfeit and to
banish the real. The great primal truth of God's unity and
supreme and exclusive government was supplanted in the old world
by the device of making men adore inferior deities, not as God,
but as representatives and vicegerents of God. So in the modern
world the leading Christian truth respecting Christ, and the
oneness of hismediation, has been supplanted by the
device of other mediators, and of another Christ,--Antichrist.
Popery isthe counterfeit of Christianity,--a most
elaborate and skilfully contriven counterfeit,-- a counterfeit in
which the form is faithfully preserved, the spirit utterly
extinguished, and the end completely inverted. This counterfeit
Church has its high priest,--the Pope,--who blasphemes the royal
priesthood of Christ, by assuming his office, when he pretends to
be Lord of the conscience, Lord of the Church, and Lord of the
world; and by assuming his names, when he calls himself "the
Light of the World," "the King of Glory,"
"the Lion of the tribe of Judah,"[1] Christ's Vicar and God's Vicegerent. This
counterfeit Church has, too, its sacrifice,--the mass, which
blasphemes the sacrifice of Christ, by virtually teaching its
inefficiency, and needing to be repeated, as is done when
Christ's very body and blood are again offered in sacrifice by
the hands of the priests of Rome, for the sins of the living and
the dead. This Church has, moreover, its Bible, which is
tradition, which blasphemes the Word of God, by virtually
teaching its insufficiency. It has its mediators,--saints and
angels, and especially the Virgin; and thus it blasphemes the one
Mediator between God and man. In fine, it blasphemes the person
and the office of the Spirit as the sanctifier, because it
teaches that its sacraments can make holy; and it blasphemes God,
by teaching that its priests can pardon sin, and can release from
the obligations of divine law. Thus has Popery counterfeited,
and, by counterfeiting, set aside, all that is vital and valuable
in Christianity. It robs Christ of his kingly office, by exalting
the Pope to his throne; it robs him of his priesthood in the
sacrifice of the mass; it robs him of his power as Mediator, by
substituting Mary; it robs him of his prophetical office, by
substituting the teachings of an infallible Church; it robs God
the Spirit of his peculiar work as the sanctifier, by attributing
the power of conferring grace to its own ordinances; and it robs
God the Father of his prerogatives, by assuming the power of
justifying and pardoning men.

Thus the counterfeit Christianity of Rome is as extensive as
the real Christianity of the New Testament: it substitutes other
objects of worship, other doctrines, other sacraments; all of
which, however, in the letter, have an exact
correspondence with the true. The forms of Christianity
have been faithfully copied; its realities have been
completely set aside. Thus Satan has carried his object, not by
erecting a system avowedly antagonistic, but by amusing and
deluding men with the counterfeit. The policy adopted in Egypt of
old to frustrate the mission of Moses, was that of bringing
forward a class of magicians to counterfeit the miracles of the
Jewish lawgiver. The same expedient has been adopted a second
time. Satan has brought forward the magicians and necromancers of
Rome, who have imitated the miracles of the gospel. And as Moses
was withstood by Jannes and Jambres, so have the lying prophets
of Rome withstood Christianity in its glorious mission of
regenerating the world. Christianity has respect to time as well
as to eternity; and in both departments of its mission has it
been withstood by the Romish soothsayers, and that, too, exactly
in the style of their Egyptian predecessors, who "did so
with their enchantments." The temporal end of Christianity
they have defeated, by persuading rulers that they were
able to secure the good and order of society. Princes have
listened to them, and refused to let the gospel have liberty; and
thus society has been corrupted and destroyed. The eternal end of
Christianity they have defeated, by persuading men that, without
parting with a single sin, or acquiring a single gracious
disposition, they might attain to heaven. They have thus retained
men under the power of corruption, and sealed them over to
eternal damnation.

But the Papacy may be viewed as of man. Primarily it is the
emanation of satanic policy; secondarily, it is the fabrication
of human ambition and wickedness. In order to discover its
genius, viewed as the creation of man, it is necessary to keep in
view the grand aim of the Papacy. Without this we cannot
appreciate its marvellous adaptation of means to their end, and
the relation of each part to the whole. There is not one of its
arrangements, however minute, nor one of its doctrines, however
unimportant it may seem, but has a direct reference to and a
powerful bearing upon the object of the Papacy. In the vast and
complicated machine there is not a useless cord or a superfluous
wheel. The object of the Papacy is, in brief, to exalt a man, or
rather a class of men, to the supreme, undivided, and absolute
control of the world and its affairs. So vast a scheme of
dominion the genius of Alexander had never dared to entertain.
The ambition of the popes far outstripped that of the Caesars,
and looked down with contempt upon their empire as insignificant
and narrow. They aspired to be gods upon the earth. It was the
majesty of the Eternal which they plotted to usurp. Pride can go
no higher. Ambition finds nothing beyond for which it may pant.
They reigned with equal power over the minds and over the bodies
of men. They grasped the reins of secular as well as of
ecclesiastical jurisdiction. They made their opinions the
standard of morals, and their wills the standard of law, to the
universe. They claimed not merely to be obeyed, but to be
worshipped. They were not monarchs, but divinities. We do not
affirm that this object was definitely proposed by the bishops of
Rome from the outset. Nay, had they seen to what their early
departures from the faith would lead,--that the principles which
they adopted contained within them the germ of a despotism
beneath which the religion and the liberties of the world would
lie crushed for ages,--they would have stopt short in their
career. The Omniscient eye alone can trace things to their
issues. It was not till ages had passed away, and numerous
usurpations had taken place, that the object of their policy was
clearly seen by the pontiffs themselves, though the invisible
prompter of that policy had doubtless proposed that end from the
first. But by the time that object came to be clearly understood,
all scruple was at an end. The pontiff panted to place himself
upon the throne of the universe, and to prostrate beneath his
feet all other dominion. The object surpassed in grandeur all to
which man had ever before aspired, and the means brought into
operation were vast beyond all former example. A policy unmatched
in dissimulation and craft,--a sagacity distinguished alike by
the largeness of its conceptions and the precision and accuracy
of its conclusions,--a quiet irresistible energy,--a firm
unalterable will,--a perseverance which no toil could exhaust,
which no difficulty could discourage, which no check could turn
from its purpose, which made all things give way to it, and which
proved itself invincible,--a vast array of physical force when an
antagonist appeared whom its other arts could not
subdue,--lavishing its favours upon its friends with boundless
prodigality, and visiting with vengeance equally unbounded its
incorrigible enemies,--wielding these qualities, the Papacy saw
its efforts crowned at last with a success which was as
astonishing as it was unprecedented.

In the first place, Popery was exceedingly fortunate in the
choice of a seat, when it selected Rome. The possession of such a
spot was almost essential to it. It was itself a tower of
strength. In no other spot of earth could its gigantic schemes of
dominion have been formed, or, if formed, realized. Sitting in
the seat which the masters of the world had so long occupied, the
Papacy appeared the rightful heir of their power. Papal Rome
reaped the fruit of the wars and the conquests, the toils and the
blood, of imperial Rome. The one had laboured and gone to her
grave; the other arose and entered into her labours. The pontiffs
perfectly understood this, and were careful to turn the advantage
it offered them to the utmost account. By heraldic and symbolic
devices they were perpetually reminding the world that they were
the successors of the Caesars; that the two Romes were linked by
an indissoluble bond; and that to the latter had descended the
heritage of glory and dominion acquired by the former. Herein we
may admire that extraordinary sagacity which fixed on this
spot,--the first, and certainly not the least striking,
indication of the profound and unrivalled genius of
Popery,--showing what that genius would become when fully
developed and matured. The Seven Hills were the home of empire
and the holy ground of superstition; and when the barbaric kings
and nations approached the spot, they were fascinated and subdued
by its mysterious and mighty influence, as the pontiffs had
foreseen they would be. Thus the young Papacy had the penetration
to discover that the sway of old Rome had by no means ended with
her life, and, by serving itself heir to her name, continued to
exercise her power long after she had gone to her grave. The
genius that could turn to so great account the traditional glory
of a departed empire was not likely to leave unimproved the
existing resources of contemporary monarchies.

In the second place, the pontiffs claimed to be the successors
of the apostles. This was a more masterly stroke of policy still.
To the temporal dominion of the Caesars they added the spiritual
authority of the apostles. It is here that the great strength of
the Papacy lies. As the successor of Peter, the Pope was greater
than as the successor of Caesar. The one gave him earth, but the
other gave him heaven. The one made him a king; the other made
him a king of kings. The one gave him the power of the sword, the
other invested him with the still more sacred authority of the
keys. The one surrounded him with all the adjuncts of temporal
sovereignty,--guards, ambassadors, and ministers of State,--and
set him over fleets and armies, imposts and revenues; the other
made him the master of inexhaustible spiritual treasures, and
enabled him to support his power by the sanctions and terrors of
the invisible world. While he has celestial dignities as well as
temporal honours wherewith to enrich his friends, he can wield
the spiritual thunder as well as the artillery of earth, in
contending with and discomfiting his foes. Such are the twin
sources of pontifical authority. The Papacy stands with one foot
on earth and the other in heaven. It has compelled the Caesars to
give it temporal power, and the apostles to yield it spiritual
authority. It is the ghost of Peter, with the shadowy diadem of
the old Caesars.

Similar is the tendency and design of all the dogmas of the
Papacy. These are but so many defences and outposts thrown up
around the infallible chair of Peter: they are so many chains
forged in the Vatican, and cunningly fashioned by Rome's
artificers, for binding the intellect and the conscience of
mankind. There is not one of the articles in her creed which is
not fitted to exalt the priesthood and degrade the people. This
is its main, almost its sole object. That creed, superstitious to
the very core, exerts no wholesome influence upon the mind: it
neither expands the intellect nor regulates the conscience. It
does not set forth the grace of the Father, or the love of the
Son, or the power of the Spirit. It has been framed with a far
different object. It sets forth the grace of the pope, the power
of the priest, and the efficacy of the sacrament. The pope, the
priest, and the sacrament, are the triune with the mystery of
which the creed of Popery is occupied. We have already pointed
out the tendency of each of the separate articles as they passed
in review before us, and it becomes unnecessary here to dwell
upon them. Let it suffice to remark, that by the doctrine of tradition
the priests are constituted the exclusive channels of divine
revelation, and by the doctrine of inherent efficacy they
become the only channels of divine influence. In the one case the
people are entirely dependent upon them for all knowledge of the
will of God; and in the other, they are not less dependent upon
them for the enjoyment of divine blessings. It is easy to
conceive how this tends to exalt this class of men. They have
power spiritually to shut heaven, that it rain not upon
the earth. By sprinkling a little water on the face of a child,
the priest can remove all its guilt, and impart holiness to it. A
whisper from the priest in the confessional can absolve from sin,
or adjudge to eternal flames. By muttering a few words in Latin,
he can create the flesh and blood, the soul and divinity, of
Christ; and in saying mass, he can so regulate his intention as
to direct its efficacy to any person he pleases, whether in this
world or in the next. At his word the doors of purgatory are
closed, and those of paradise fly open. He can raise to immortal
bliss, or sink into eternal woe. These are tremendous powers; and
the man who wields them, in the eyes of an ignorant people is not
a mortal, but a god. "It is a most execrable thing,"
said Pope Paschal II., "that those hands which have received
a power above that of angels,--which can by an act of their
ministry create God himself, and offer him for the salvation of
the world,--should ever be put into subjection of the hands of
kings." The truths which the gospel makes known are intended
to elevate the people; the dogmas of Romanism are intended to
exalt only the priesthood, and to put the people under their
feet. The miraculous power with which the Roman clergy are
invested places them above kings;--they are raised to a level
with the Deity himself.

Whatever order or government exists in society, Popery has had
the art to seize and make subservient to her own aggrandizement.
She infused herself into the governments of Europe. She possessed
them, as it were, and made them really parts of herself. The
various thrones of the west were but satrapies of the fisherman's
chair. The princes that occupied them were always, in point of
fact, and not unfrequently in point of conventional arrangement,
the lieutenants and deputies of the Pope. They were taught that
it was their glory to be so; that their crowns acquired new
lustre by being laid at the feet of the successor of the
apostles; and that their arms were ennobled and sanctified by
being wielded in his service. The pontiff taught them that their
life was bound up with his life; that without him they could not
exist; and that in no way could they so effectually strengthen
their own authority as by maintaining his. Thus did Popery poison
at their source the springs of law and government, and bind the
kings and kingdoms of Europe in one vast confederation against
the interests of liberty and religion, and in support of that
divinity who sat upon the Seven Hills. No doubt the members of
that confederation sometimes quarrelled among themselves, and
sometimes revolted against their sacerdotal master; but even when
they hated the person of the Pope, they remained true to his
system. They warred, it might be, against the pontiff, but they
still were the yoke of the Papacy. They were revellers against
Hildebrand or against Clement, but all the while they were
obedient sons of the Church. In nothing does the genius of Popery
appear more wonderful than in that it could bind to its
chariot-wheel so many powerful and independent princes, and
reconcile so many diverse and conflicting interests, and unite
them all in support of itself.

If Popery has leant for aid upon civil government, and has
known how to convert its functions into organs of its own, it has
leant not less decidedly upon human nature, and has had the art
to draw from it most substantial support. The nature of man it
has profoundly studied, and thoroughly understands. There is not
a faculty of his soul, nor a feeling of his heart, which is not
known to it. There is not a phase of character nor a diversity of
taste among the whole human race, of which it is not cognizant.
Whatever talent it be which any of the sons of men possess,
Popery will speedily discover it, and instantly find a fitting
sphere for its exercise. Whether the faculty in question be a
good or an evil one, matters wonderfully little, seeing Popery
knows the secret of making both alike serviceable. It is a system
adapted to man as he is. It runs parallel with the entire range
of his hopes and his fears, his virtues and his passions. his
eccentricities, his foibles, his tastes. There is no one
therefore who will not find in Popery something that corresponds
with his own predominant quality and taste. It is the most
accomodating of all systems, and has therefore received an equal
measure of attachment and support from men differing widely in
their intellectual powers, their acquired tastes, and their moral
dispositions. To the man of the world who delights in the glitter
of show, and yields his submission only where he is dazzled by
the splendour of rank, it presents a Church moulded on the
pattern of earthly monarchies,--an imposing hierarchy, rising in
successive ranks, throne above throne, from the barefooted friar
up to Christ's vicar. To the man who is capable of being
captivated with only an outward religion, here is a worship to
his heart's content,--a gorgeous ritual, performed amidst the
glories of architecture, of statuary, and of painting, amid the
perfume of incense, the glare of lamps, and the swell of noble
music. There is no revelation of God's holiness; there are no
humbling views of the sinner's unworthiness and guilt
communicated; everything is so contriven as powerfully to stir,
not the conscience, which is left in its profound sleep, but the
imagination; and to gratify, not the longings of the spiritual
nature, which do not exist, but the cravings of the senses. In
short, every ingredient that could intoxicate and madden, that
could weaken reason and drown the man in delirium, has Rome mixed
in her "witch's cauldron." The figure is almost
apocalyptic,--the cup of sorcery.

To that large class of mankind who seek to reconcile their
hopes of heaven with the indulgence of their passions, the
religion of Popery is admirably adapted. The religion of Rome is
not a principle, but a ritual; and the observance of that
ritual will secure heaven, let the morals of the man be ever so
corrupt. It is not necessary to part with any sin; no change of
heart, no progress in holiness, is required; obedience to the
Church is the one cardinal virtue. The want of this alone can
damn a man. More lax and pliant than even Mahommedanism or
Hinduism, there is not a ceremonial rite nor a moral duty in the
system of Popery from which a few gold pieces may not purchase a
dispensation. It is the most demoralizing of all idolatries. It
spares the indolent man the trouble of inquiry, by presenting him
with the infallibility. In fact, it makes his indolence a virtue,
and thus, by sanctifying his vices, makes him more completely its
slave. But farther, there is a lurking disposition in the heart
of man to claim heaven as a debt due, rather than receive it as a
free gift. This propensity Popery completely gratifies. Its grand
characteristic, as a religious system, is works,in
opposition to faith,--salvation by merit, in opposition to
salvation by grace. And thus, while it traverses the grand idea
of the gospel, it enlists on its side the pride of the human
heart. This lays open to us one of the main sources of Popery's
success. While the gospel is met by the whole force of
unsanctified human nature, because it seeks to eradicate those
principles which are naturally the most powerful in the heart of
man, and to implant their opposites, Popery takes man as he is,
and, without seeking to eradicate a single evil principle, finds
him a sphere and sets him a-working. Passions already strong
Popery nurtures into yet greater strength, and so creates a vast
moving force within the man. If her fund of heavenly treasure be
imaginary, not so her fund of earthly power. There exist within
her pale elements of diverse character and tremendous force, and
these Popery knows right well how to guide. The forces are
completely under her control; and however noxious in themselves,
and however destructive if left to act without restraint, she
knows how to make them not only perfectly safe, but eminently
serviceable. In few things is the genius of Popery more
conspicuous than in this composition of forces,--this combination
of elements the most various; so that from the utmost diversity
of action there is educed at last the most perfect unity of
result, and that result the aggrandizement of the Church. That
Church provides convents for the ascetic and the mystic,
carnivals for the gay, missions for the enthusiast, penances for
the man suffering from remorse, sisterhoods of mercy for the
benevolent, crusades for the chivalrous, secret missions for the
man whose genius lies in intrigue, the Inquisition, with its
racks and screws, for the man who combines detestation of heresy
with the love of cruelty, indulgences for the man of wealth and
pleasure, purgatory to awe the refractory and frighten the
vulgar, and a subtile theology for the casuist and the
dialectician. Within the pale of that Church there is work for
all these labourers, and that too the very work in which each
delights, while Rome reaps the fruit of all. "To him who
would scourge himself into godliness," says Channing,
speaking of the Church of Rome, "it offers a whip; for him
who would starve himself into spirituality it provides the
mendicant convents of St. Francis; for the anchorite it prepares
the death-like silence of La Trappe; to the passionate young
woman it presents the raptures of St. Theresa, and the marriage
of St. Catherine with her Saviour; for the restless pilgrim,
whose piety needs greater variety than the cell of the monk, it
offers shrines, tombs, relics, and other holy places in Christian
lands, and, above all, the holy sepulchre near Calvary. . . .
When in Rome, the traveller sees by the side of the
purple-lackeyed cardinal, the begging friar; when under the
arches of St. Peter, he sees a coarsely-dressed monk holding
forth to a ragged crowd; or when beneath a Franciscan church,
adorned with the most precious works of art, he meets a
charnel-house, where the bones of the dead brethren are built
into walls, between which the living walk to read their
mortality. He is amazed, if he give himself time for reflection,
at the infinite variety of machinery which Catholicism has
brought to bear on the human mind."[2] "The unlettered enthusiast," says
Macaulay, "whom the Anglican Church makes an enemy, and,
whatever the polite and learned may think, a most dangerous
enemy, the Catholic Church makes a champion. She bids him nurse
his beard, covers him with a gown and hood of coarse dark stuff,
ties a rope round his waist, and sends him forth to teach in her
name. He costs her nothing; he takes not a ducat away from the
revenues of her beneficed clergy; he lives by the alms of those
who respect his spiritual character and are grateful for his
instructions; he preaches not exactly in the style of Massillon,
but in a way which proves the passions of uneducated hearers; and
all his influence is employed to strengthen the Church of which
he is a minister. To that Church he becomes as strongly attached
as any of the cardinals whose scarlet carriages and liveries
crowd the entrance of the palace on the Quirinal. In this way the
Church of Rome unites in herself all the strength of
establishment and all the strength of dissent. With the utmost
pomp of a dominant hierarchy above, she has all the energy of the
voluntary system below."[3]

But we have been able to unfold but a tithe of the wonderful
and unrivalled genius of the Papacy. When one thinks of the
amazing variety and endless diversity of qualities which here
entered into combination, he feels as if the Papacy had summoned
from their grave all the systems of policy and all the schemes of
dominion which had ever existed, and, compelling them to lay bare
the springs of their success and the elements of their strength,
had selected the choicest qualities of each, and combined them
into one system of unrivalled power. It united the subtile
intellect of Greece with the iron strength of Rome. Qualities
which never met before, Popery found out the means of reconciling
and joining in harmonious action. The wildest enthusiasm and the
soberest reason, the grossest sensuality and the most rigid
asceticism, the most visionary genius and the coolest and most
practical sagacity, the extreme of fanaticism and the extreme of
moderation, Popery taught to dwell together in peace, and to work
together in harmony. Nothing was so exalted as to be beyond its
reach; nothing was so low as to be beneath its care. It accepted
the labours of the peasant and the serf, and it taught the titled
noble to stoop to its service. It arrayed itself in purple, and
dwelt in the palace of kings; it put on rags, and companied with
the outcast. Its marvellous flexibility made either character
equally easy and equally natural. It entered with like avidity
into the projects of princes, the intrigues of statesmen, the
speculations of the learned, and the homely pursuits of the
artizan. In this way the spell of its power was felt by all ranks
of society and by all grades of intellect. Its spirit was
operative at all times and in every place. To elude its eye or
resist its arm was alike impossible. So terrible a system never
before existed on the earth; and, once overthrown, it will, we
trust, have no successor. Well may the Papacy be termed the
perfection of human wisdom and the masterpiece of satanic policy.